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Valorant Champions Tour

Game	Valorant
Founded	2020; 5 years ago (2020)
First season	2021; 4 years ago (2021)
Owner	Riot Games
Director	Leo Faria[1]
Country	Global
Official website	valorantesports.com

TheValorant Champions Tour (VCT) is a global competitiveesports tournament series for the video gameValorant organised byRiot Games, the game's developers. The series runs multiple events throughout each season, culminating inValorant Champions, the top-level event of the tour. The VCT was announced in 2020, with its inaugural season taking place in 2021.

In November 2020,Riot Games announced the firstValorant Champions Tour, a tournament series divided into three tiers: Challengers, Masters, and Champions. Challengers would act as the lowest tier, split into seven regions: North America, Brazil, Latin America (Hispanic America), EMEA, Southeast Asia (which later included South Asia and Oceania, becoming the Asia-Pacific region), Korea, Japan. Teams that advance past Challengers would move on to Masters, where teams would not be divided by regions anymore, and the top 16 teams from Masters would move on to Champions, the final tournament of VCT.^[2] In February 2021, they announced the VCT Game Changers, a supplementary tournament initiative for women and marginalized genders.^[3]

Riot hired esports infrastructure company Nerd Street Gamers as operators and producers for all North American Challengers and Masters events.^[4][5] They also hired several third-party companies to broadcast their events, such as Liga de Videojuegos Profesional (LVP) for their Spanish-language broadcasts andLetsPlay.Live for theirOceania broadcasts.^[6] The2021 Champions tournament took place on December 1–12 at theVerti Music Hall in Berlin, Germany, concluding with team Acend defeatingGambit Esports in the grand finals by a score of 3–2.^[7][8]

Over 10,000 teams competed in the VCT in 2021. Outside of Champions, VCT saw its highest viewership at theReykjavík Masters tournament in May, with a peak viewership of 1,085,850. The Champions grand finals match in December reached a peak viewership of 1,089,068, making it the VCT's highest peak viewership.^[9][10]

Riot made several changes to the format of VCT for its second iteration. While the overall structure of Challengers, Masters, and Champions remained unchanged, it reduced the number of stages of Challengers and Masters events from three to two. VCT Challengers began on February 11, 2022.^[11] The2022 Champions Tournament took place from September 1 to 18 in Istanbul, Turkey.^[12]

Riot Games announced a new format starting in 2023.^[13] The season will be split into three international regions –Americas,EMEA, andPacific instead of the 7 regions format used in previous years. Each international region will have its own International League that replaces the Challengers to become the domestic competitions to qualify for Masters and Champions. On September 21, 2022, Riot Games announced the thirty teams that had been selected as part of their new partnership format.^[14][15]

ForChina, Riot Games showed favor towards players here by giving Chinese teams a number of direct slots to participate in global tournaments (Masters and Champions) through third parties competitions in Hong Kong server, instead of having to play through Pacific league. In a June 2023 press conference, Riot COO Whalen Rozelle confirmed that Valorant would launch inChina in July under the name 无畏契约 (lit. 'Fearless Contract'), with hopes to launch a VCT league there in 2024.[16] Shortly after in August, Riot announced an own regional league for China, and raising the number of partnered teams to 40.^[17]

As of 2023, 30 teams are selected to be partner teams in International Leagues for five years (to 2027) with 10 teams per region. Non-partner teams compete in many sub-regions of Challengers events to qualify for "Ascension" events. The Ascension events in 2023 and 2024 had one winner per region, which earned them a temporary (initially two-year) promotion into their regions' International League. The promoted teams have a chance to qualify for the global tournaments (Masters and Champions), as well as get benefits provided to other partnered teams. Through the Challengers promotion system, the four International Leagues expanded by one team each, until they reached a cap of 12 teams in each region in 2025 (beforehand this was supposed to be a 14-team cap by 2027).^[18][19] From 2025, the two temporary teams per International League can stay up via qualifying for Champions, compete in Ascension to stay in the league if they finished 5th to 8th, or get relegated back to their Challengers region if finishing 9th to 12th; only one of the guest teams per region can stay up via Champions, with the best performer of the two guests taking the spot if both qualify.^[20]

Teams in each International League play onLAN in a centralized local: the Riot Games Arena inLos Angeles for VCT Americas,^[21] Riot Games Arena inBerlin for VCT EMEA,^[22] and SangamSOOP Colosseum inSeoul for VCT Pacific.^[23]

Right from global launch, althoughValorant had not been licensed for release in China, Riot Games showed favor towards Chinese players by allowing Chinese teams to participate in global tournaments (Masters and Champions) through achievements in domestic tournaments organized by third parties, played atHong Kong server.^[f]

Since 2024, withValorant licensed for release servers inmainland, Riot launched the VCT CN specifically for the only country that they considers a pro region on the same level as the three International Leagues for many countries, as well as competition slots for only teams from China at Masters and Champions.^[30] They also announced thesecond Masters event of the year to take place inShanghai and released a new Chinese agentIso alongside previous agentSage.

Similar to three International Leagues, ten Chinese teams are selected to be partner teams in China League for four years (to 2027), and two non-partner teams qualified from the China Ascension. The China League is based at the VCT CN Arena in Shanghai.^[31]

TheValorant Masters is a biannualValorant international tournament organized by Riot Games in the middle of the year since 2021.^[33][34] Similar to theMid-Season Invitational forLeague of Legends, it is the second most important internationalValorant tournament after Champions.^[35] There are usually two Masters tournaments each year. Teams must place near the top of their regional league to qualify for Masters.^[36][37]

TheValorant Champions is the annual professionalValorant world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games and is the culmination of each VCT season. It includes spots with points earned throughout the year. Teams compete for the world champion title ofValorant esports.

Non-partner teams compete in Challengers events of sub-regions in Americas, EMEA and Pacific to qualify for "Ascension", the yearly promotion event to the respective International Leagues. Originally, it was announced that teams would have two-year stays in their International League after winning Ascension, with one team promoted every year until 2026, when two teams would be promoted every year until 2028. The leagues would have 14 teams each, totaling to 42 teams across the three leagues.

On June 21, 2024, Riot announced changes to the Ascension format from 2025, with teams promoted to the International Leagues for one-year stays instead, after which they would be relegated toChallengers again if they did not finish in the top 8 in their region's regional League; if they qualified forChampions however, they get to stay for another year; if they finished in the playoffs of the International League, they qualify for that year'sAscension for a chance to keep their place in the league.^[20]

In 2023-24, there are 23 minor regional leagues across the three international territories.^[38] From 2025, they got decreased to 15.

Valorant Game Changers is a series of domestic competitions for women and other genders withinValorant esports.^[39] Teams that finish in top places qualify for theValorant Game Changers Championship, the world championship event of Game Changers, and also earn the chance to be promoted to their region's Challengers league.

(*) Non-partner teams in franchise system

  *   Team or organization no longer participates inValorant esports.

The original masters trophy was unveiled by Riot at a May 2021 media preview event in the build up to Masters Reykjavik. It features a metal bottom and a glass top.

The trophy was redesigned in 2023, again by Volpin Props, to be reusable for Masters tournaments in multiple regions.^[55] It stands at 18 inches (46 cm) and features a swappable 'Radianite' core. ForMasters Tokyo, it featured duelist Yoru's ultimateOni mask. The body of the trophy is palladium-plated with plastic components.

The Valorant Champions trophy was first unveiled ahead of Valorant Champions 2021. Also designed and built by Volpin Props ofAtlanta, Georgia, it stands at 2 feet (61 cm) tall and is partially 3D-printed, with 24 karat gold decoration overlaid.^[56]

• Official website

• Valorant competitions
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